Desituating Action: Digital Representation of Context

Many psychological studies have shown that when we act, and especially when we interact, we consciously and unconsciously attend to context of many types. Sensors can pick up some but not all context that is acquired through our senses. Some context is lost, some is added, and captured context is presented in new ways. Digital aggregators and interpreters do not aggregate and interpret the same way we do. Missing or altered context disrupts our processing of information in ways that we may not recognize. To address the disruption we may use additional sensors to capture and deliver some of the missing context. Learning to handle these new conduits is then a further source of disruption, and on it can go. With greater knowledge of context, we can work and interact more efficiently, assuming that we can learn to take advantage of the information without being overwhelmed. However, converting contextual information to a digital format changes it in specific ways. Transient information becomes more permanent, local information is made available globally, and information that once spread slowly can spread much more quickly. The information can enable us to work more efficiently, but these changes in its nature have profound indirect effects. The potential loss of privacy is widely discussed, but other effects may be more significant. In particular, the loss of confinement and transience of information creates an environment that is fundamentally unnatural, in conflict with the one we evolved to live in.